Link: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/pedocin-la-lanterna-beach-trieste-gender-segregated

El Pedocin’s gender segregation is also tied to Trieste’s history of female emancipation. This was one of the first places in what is now Italy to have a girls-only high school, says Pizzi, who adds that female education was normal in the major cities of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but not in Italy.

“When Trieste became Italian in 1918, the levels of schooling were very high,” she says. “Trieste was not only a prosperous city, but it was culturally very vibrant and the middle classes were very well educated — including the women.”

Like many other populations in the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Triestini embraced the great outdoors and physical fitness. Covacich calls it a “cult of physicality.” Because of that emancipation, women were part of it. This was a city full of sporting associations — swimming, sailing, rock-climbing. “El Pedocin was part of this,” says Pizzi. “It was about cultivating the body as a form of sport and personal advancement.”

Covacich says that right from the start, women wore relatively modern, and daring, swimsuits. This wasn’t a place to be coy — it was a place to get tanned and go swimming. “A tan probably was the crown for this idea of physical wellness,” he says.

...

El Pedocin separated the genders from the day it opened. Not so unusual in 1903, perhaps, but even as fashions changed the Triestini kept the beach single-sex — a result of that female emancipation.
In the early 20th century, some of the best-known writers, journalists, photographers, artists and sportspeople in Trieste were women, says Pizzi, who cites Wanda Wulz’s “Io e Gatto” photograph, an original print of which is in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, as a portrait of “feral femininity.” The city, she says, had a “feminist makeup” before it became part of Italy.

And as the city integrated into Italy’s Catholic culture, that feminism stayed strong.

“It was a segregated beach from the start, and it was seen as a good thing — that’s why it has carried on all that time,” says Pizzi. “Women didn’t need to be bothered or disturbed or nagged. It was a space where they could sunbathe without fearing any interference from men … There was a sense of ownership that this was their space and they didn’t need to be bothered by the male gaze.”

Covacich adds that it has always been a symbol of “liberty” for women. He sees the beach as a place for women, despite its male side. Going there with his mom, surrounded by women from young to old, gave him a sense of “eternal nurturing,” he says. The almost surreal nature of growing up there, surrounded by women, is one he likens to the female-centered fantasy scenes in Federico Fellini’s 1963 movie, “8½.”

Non-paywall link

Now I want to go there.

In Vancouver, there's a clothing optional beach with a strong culture for leaving people alone. But it's mixed genders so occasionally you get tourists who stare and gawk. While I enjoyed going with a mixed group, I always had strangers flirting with me when I came alone. The kind of people who need to be told six times to take a hint. It'd be nice to have segregated areas.

Is it the one place that, finally, doesn't have a single slingshot mankini on an all-organic fur suit?